The Girls From Brazil

To be sure, a fledgling Brazilian performer could make a perfectly respectable career, and maybe a bundle besides, recycling unalloyed classics by the likes of Caetano Veloso and João Gilberto, not to mention the oeuvre of venerated "bambas," or samba aces, such as Monarco da Portela and Cartola. Plenty of novice musicians do just that, donning straw hats and white linen to mimic their forebears with such zeal that music critic Paulo Roberto Pires has dubbed them "Talibambas." Yet in the race to the cutting edge, even more musical rebels have gone to the other extreme. Breaking the rules has become a cliché in the postmodern groves of world music, where there's hardly a standard on the air or the Internet that hasn't been remastered with digital hiccups or the Sturm und Drang of a Fender Rhodes piano.

Brazil's singers are tinkering with the best of them. The 26-year-old São Paulo singer and composer CéU--stage name for Maria do Céu Whitaker Pouças--segues easily on her eponymous debut CD from pop to reggae to dub in velvet, jazz-accented vocals. But Brazilian rhythms are still the foundation, especially on soulful cuts like "Samba na Sola" and the stirring "Ave Cruz." In the same way, Aydar's feathery vocals and soothing arrangements turned Leci Brandão's classic samba "Zé do Caroço" into a languid, hybrid "samba bolero" that teases and flatters the original.

Sometimes the blend can go wrong; too many of the tunes touted as samba-reggae sound like neither. "How many times do we have to hear a song start with an electronic scratch?" asks Pires. Yet for all the genre hopping, fancy electronics and imported flair they deploy, the best Brazilian musicians are still rooted in samba, bossa nova, forró--and all the rest of the sounds that have always made this country sing. "Being global means nothing if you don't know where your heart lies," Carlinhos Brown once said. That's a beat Brazil's new wave of talent seems determined to follow.

© 2006